Beyond a film about ALS, the devastating neurological disease that has spurred millions of Americans to dump buckets of ice water over their heads and donate money, George C. Wolfe’s touching drama “You’re Not You” (based on Michelle Wildgen’s novel) is a compelling portrait of female friendship weathering the proverbial maelstrom of life.

“It’s a non-romantic love story,” says star Emmy Rossum, who plays Bec, an adrift twentysomething hired as the caretaker of Kate (Hilary Swank), a gifted pianist stricken with ALS. “It’s about two women who become friends and realize they need each other and that they can learn from each other how to live. For me it was super powerful.”

So taken with Rossum’s performance, the sixth annual Carmel Intl. Film Festival is screening the film at 8 p.m. Oct. 16 and honoring the actress with its annual Breakthrough Award.

“A great film is when you can relate to it on a personal level and that’s what that film did for me,” says Thomas Burns, fest president and co-founder. “Both performances were remarkable, and, obviously, it’s a very current topic, but I think it is about the relationship and that’s what’s appealing on a much broader basis. That’s the mass appeal.”

From the moment she read the script, Rossum, currently shooting season 5 of Showtime’s “Shameless,” campaigned heavily for the lead role.

“I wanted it so badly,” Rossum says. “It’s a type of script that you read and sob and feel like it’s something you really want to be part of. I love the character. I (wanted) to fight for it. It was one of those scripts where, after you audition for it, you send an email (to the casting agents and producers) and say what it means to you and why you’re the only person for the role. And hopefully they bite. And they did.”

For Rossum, the Breakthrough Award is an encouraging validation of her commitment to her craft.

“Being recognized by the community is a wonderful feeling,” she says. “But you can never do work expecting that somebody will applaud you. My motto is always to just put it all out there and if they like it, they like it and if they don’t, they don’t. In this case people liked it and it’s a really good feeling.”

Sign Up for Daily Insider Newsletter

Disney’s live-action “Aladdin” remake is on its way to a commendable Memorial Day weekend debut with an estimated $109 million over the four-day period. The musical fantasy starring Will Smith and Mena Massoud should uncover about $87 million in its first three days from 4,476 North American theaters after taking in $31 million on Friday. [...]

Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse,” with Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, won the Cannes Film Festival critics’ award for best first or second feature in Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week, one of the first prizes for which “The Lighthouse” has been eligible at Cannes. The award was announced Saturday in Cannes by the Intl. Federation of [...]

The Cannes Market, the Cannes Film Festival’s commercial wing, says that its 2019 edition welcomed a record number of participants. It reported 12,527 attendees. The largest group by nationality was from the U.S. with 2,264 participants, followed by France with 1,943 participants, and the U.K. 1,145. Comparable figures for 2018 were not available. The number [...]

It’s difficult to imagine Ridley Scott’s sci-fi/horror classic “Alien” without the clear-minded, strong presence of Tom Skerritt as Dallas, the captain of the ill-fated Nostromo. But originally, the actor turned down “Alien,” which celebrates its 40th anniversary on May 25, though he thought Dan O’Bannon’s script read well. “There was nobody involved at the time [...]

Cinematographer Claudio Miranda, who won an Oscar for his imagery of magical realism on Ang Lee’s 2103 “Life of Pi,” will be honored with the Visionary Achievement Award at Cine Gear Expo, the artisans-oriented trade show and conference that will take place at the Paramount lot from May 30 through June 2. A pioneer in [...]

It is 1978 in the City of Angels and the hard-drinking washed-up sleuth Carson Phillips is having another boozy day through its atmospheric streets. There is a hint of innate coolness and self-deprecation in his elongated voiceover intro — you might even briefly mistake Carson, played by a one-note John Travolta, for a Philip Marlowe [...]

Most of us, in our romantic lives, meditate here and there on the other roads we might have traveled, and movies are uniquely equipped to channel those alternate-universe-of-love possibilities. That’s the idea at the (broken) heart of “Casablanca.” And the fantasy of getting to see the turns your life didn’t take play out right in [...]